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Subject: Re: Test suites

Author: chandler yergin

Date: 10:14:12 02/01/06

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On February 01, 2006 at 12:04:47, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On February 01, 2006 at 11:14:36, David B Weller wrote:
>
>>I was just here trying to figure out why my engine doesnt get a certain bm for a
>>positional test, and it occurred to me ...
>>
>>Why would I trust that?
>>
>>Many of the basic terms, eg., isolated pawn, have a fairly well established
>>value, representing a statisitical average over many, many positions
>>
>>If my engine,is missing some positonal move, for no other reason than I can
>>tell, except perhaps my isolated = 20 should be isolated = 25, then I am
>>disregarding the trillions of other positions where it is, statistically
>>speaking, really 20
>>
>>As it has been pointed out many times, these tests suites are good only for
>>detecting gross errors
>>
>>So if you plan on tweaking the value of your SE metrics by test suites, make
>>sure it has about a million positions ;-)
>>
>>Maybe this is why 'auto' tuning is hard. Because if the suite doesnt contain
>>enough data to be representative of all the features one is trying to tune, it
>>will just be a waste of time, and make it worse...
>>
>>It could be that many problems can be easily solved, simply by inflating or
>>deflating the right term(s). And certainly a 'genetic' algorithm would find the
>>right ones to inflate/deflate on a small set of positions in order to get more
>>of them right...
>>
>>Fact is, it could be the very reason the position got in the test suite, is
>>because its is a little 'freakish'. Then what? We're tuning our engines to
>>become worse!
>>
>>my $0.02
>>
>>IMHO
>>
>>-David
>
>And yet the really good engines tend to solve all of them, or nearly all of
>them.
>
>Of course, an equal problem to test suites is that all of them are full of
>outright mistakes and errors.

Thank You! I certainly agree with your comment!
cy
>
>Probably the best debugged suite is WAC and yet I imagine that it still contains
>errors.
>
>Good tactical ability is a necessary (but not sufficient) component for engine
>strength.



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